Posts Tagged ‘guild beta’

It was an announcement that was heard ’round the world… of guild communities. The very, very long-awaited guild beta was pronounced to start in July, with beta keys flying every which way to various guilds who applied. And yet… and yet Chrono Chaos was overlooked. WE SHALL NOT BE SLIGHTED!

Beta Ticker:

752,553 (+8,950 from last week)

Quotes of the Week:

“I can’t say why but believe the hype for WAR. I’ve heard from plenty of trusted people that this game’s on a solid bee-line to success. Trusted by me anyway.” ~ JoBildo

“In truth, MMOG developers really haven’t seen anything comparable to this situation since the genre really began hitting its stride in early 2000. Even the competition between EverQuest II and the original release of WoW isn’t comparable.” ~ TTH on the WAR vs. WoW launch

Aaaaand right after I wrote that previous article, the newsletter plopped down in my inbox with some stuff I hadn’t yet covered.

The Guild Beta is officially announced to begin in July. This is, of course, a great sign — Guild Beta is the last major “closed beta” phase before the NDA drops and open beta begins. For those not in a super awesome time traveling guild such as Chrono Chaos, with access to the guild beta, you might be wondering why GB is such a big deal. Other than being a stepping stone to release, guilds are one of the keystones of WAR, and the wholesale inclusion of numerous established guilds to test the current guild tools is vital to seeing if this puppy will have legs. When the NDA drops, all testers will have voices, but a big-name guild will have a louder voice than most. If they come out as a group saying, “Heck YES we’re playing WAR come release!”, then it’s a huge PR coup for Mythic.

Another dungeon name is announced: Gunbad. Unofficial abbreviation: “Gun”. I love it. “Want to shoot the Gun?”

This item from the upcoming round of beta peaks my interest: “Real Time Website Updates with Character Profiles and RvR Stats.” I can speculate, but… I’d just rather find out more on this later.

We found out a month ago that the Magus would have temporary pet summons, a la the Engineer’s turrets. The newsletter expands on these a bit — Magi can summon one of three varieties of short-range daemons: pink, blue or flame.

The Archmage and Disciple of Khaine get career mastery explanations, but I’ll go into those at a later point, as I will the scenarios.

I actually started out thinking this was a poor man’s copy of earlier newsletters, but once I looked at the whole package, I’m actually quite impressed. I appreciate the glimpse into the guild leveling system, the BS dungeon (I know a lot of people were asking about dungeons, so good for Mythic to get that stuff out), and beta tester testimonies, as always.

As our pretend time traveling WAR guild continues to grow in ranks (join today! fill out an application, i.e. “post a comment in the comments section”), it’s time to put down into cold, hard words what our guild is all about. Are you listening, EA Mythic? You called down the thunder, and now you got it!

CHRONO CHAOS: MISSION STATEMENT

We are an elite guild of time traveling agents, sent back from the year 2008 to get in the guild beta and possibly go on an awkward date with our parents.

We exist to secure a spot in the guild beta, above and beyond all the “common” guilds who were too unimaginative to wait until the last moment — and beyond — and then invent nifty-cool technology to rectify procrastination.

If necessary, we will go back even further in time to get “the dirt” on WAR devs — such as how Jeff Hickman used to eBay Underoos before getting a job at Mythic — to use as blackmail.

Time travel will not be used for trivial matters; for example, there will be no killing of Hitler or rescuing dinosaurs for your wondrous theme park starring Jeff Goldblum.

Snacks and pop will be provided for guild members only.

We refuse to be classified as “Order” or “Destruction” — instead, we will join the fabled third WAR faction, “Super Badass”.

The seventh rule of Chrono Chaos: do not talk about Chrono Chaos, unless you’re trying to impress a potential date. Then, fling your membership around like a cat at a pro-dog rally.

The rule of the blogosphere is that if there isn’t enough real news going on, we’ll make it up ourselves. Richard Bartle, crown prince of MUDs, was quoted in an interview effectively saying that Warhammer and Warcraft were the same game. This ignited a firestorm of nerdrage, dozens of posts, and (surprisingly) dozens of replies from Bartle himself.

Beta Ticker:

743,603

+14,757 from last week

Quotes of the Week:

“I’ve already played Warhammer. It was called World of Warcraft.” ~ Richard Bartle

“It’s fantasy with all the crap bits taken out.” ~ Paul Barnett

“If a developer’s confidence equated directly to the excellence of a video game, then Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning would easily be one of the best MMOs ever made.” ~ IGN

“[Age of Conan’s launch] showed us that it’s very important that you be as polished and complete when you launch your game.” ~ Jeff Hickman

Blogs are great models of how an epidemic plague might spread, if said plague was made out of words not typically run through spell-checker (*note: we at WAAAGH! do not believe in spell-checkers for religious reasons). Someone gets their tooth on an infected monkey of a story, and before you can say “Burn the corpses!”, it’s everywhere like a party rash. The Hot New Thing, if you will. And it’s an odd duty of a blogger to help spread the disease instead of contain it in a safe quarantine. I know, it doesn’t make sense, but I didn’t create blogs and I can’t fight anything with the suffix -og on it.

Today, my RSS feeds switched from yesterday’s contagion of “Richard Bartle gets his first 15 minutes of fame since 1978″ to “OMG GIULD BATA!!!” While I had a humorous cartoon illustration of Bartle to share with you, well, out with the old and in with the new festering development.

So, yeah, to no one’s surprise that read the May newsletter or read the latest Herald article, guild beta codes are being shipped off to scores of happy-go-lucky cliques throughout the world with the promise of imminent inclusion into the closed beta …(you know, sometime in the next four weeks)… and that is that. The WAR community gives a happy sigh — one step closer to live release — and we can continue fighting the infection with flamethrowers and syringes full of grape Kool-Aid.

Except that this is decidedly not okay, since I — last time I checked — am not a guild, did not apply for this phase in the beta, and thus have probably the same odds of getting in as a manatee has swaying the boat-going public in Florida to take a rest and stay out of the water for a day so that their baby manatees don’t get chopped up into manatee chum. And YES, I included that last sentence solely so I could use a manatee graphic for this post.

The way I see it, the only way to rectify this clerical error is by forming a guild, commondeering a time travel vessel (I’m not picky: DeLorean, Time Booth or magical amulet, your pick), and going back a year or so and getting my foot in the door. And since we have established I cannot be a one-person guild, I need at least six brave souls who will unite in this eon-spanning cause to join my guild, Chrono Chaos, before we make the journey back to 2007 to change things and then return to the now to get our guild beta key.

I normally save this sort of thing for the weekly Da Newz, but this seemed like something to bring up today — Champions of Stuff noted that in the newest “News from the Front” article on the herald, it looks as if they’re pointing to an immanent guild beta test. The quote he pulled is:

“The WAR has come to a climax as mighty guilds are called upon from near and far to aid in the torrential storm!”

As you probably know, the long-awaited guild beta has been a contentious sore spot with some of the WAR community, who anticipated leaping into the beta long before now. Will we find out more info with the June newsletter next week? Will ants stop invading my office? Who knows!

Quote Of The Week: “So, coming to the shows, especially shows like this that are not industry exclusive, half-academic nonsense, are absolutely critical to what we do.” ~ Josh Drescher, on the NY Comic Con

Big Story Of The Week – The NY Comic Con: Reports, videos and interviews are pouring in from the weekend Comic Con, where (once again) players got their mitts on the WAR beta — and no NDA for that sort of thing! Warhammer Vault gathered up a lot of tidbits from fans who attended (including armor for mounts!) and Josh Drescher wraps things up in his blog.

Breaking News: This morning word is popping up all over the place that Mythic is sending out Guild Beta invites! This doesn’t mean that the Guild Beta will begin today, just that the invites have gone out. (As reported by Warhammer Geek, WHA Forums, and the WAR VN boards)

A new “News From The Front” was posted on the Herald, which included a short piece of fiction, a wrapup of the Dark Elf/High Elf testing, some fictional correspondance and 27 new screenshots!

James Nichols commented on the Head Start program over at WHA forums, stating the good that the program will do for the launch.

Warhammer Conflict brought us both a video interview with Josh Dresher and Jeff Hickman, and a follow-up (text) interview with Mark Jacobs. Interesting tidbits: the head start will be a “significant period”, they are hoping to have an RP, Core and PvP-modified ruleset servers.

Random Plug Of The Week: WAAAGH! is almost a side project in my writing life — for over 11 years now I’ve been the webmaster of Mutant Reviewers From Hell, a cult movie review site that’s been covering the more offbeat, odd and delightfully strange flicks out there. We have an excellent staff of ten crazy folks who work hard to bring great material, and we invite you to head on over and check us out while you wait for WAR!

WAAAGH! is a Warhammer Online blog written by Syp, a casual-hardcore player, and is dedicated to chewing the fat about WAR's various features, the culture, the news and how Orcs can eat with such a pronounced underbite.